Mobile communications devices, such as mobile telephones, two-way pagers, Personal Digital Assistant (PDAs), Personal Information Managers (PIMs), and other hand-held computing devices have become very popular. In many cases these mobile communications devices are used as entry points into the Internet and intranets.
A problem common to many conventional mobile communication devices is that these devices are characterized by severe limitations in processing power, memory size, display size and the size of the buttons or keys by which a user can input request to, view and manipulate information obtained from a network server. Furthermore, the bandwidth of the communications channels connecting these mobile devices to a network server e.g. a hypermedia server on the Internet, is also severely limited.
One attempt to overcome these limitations of current mobile devices is to make use of a proxy server to facilitate communications between the various communications devices and a network server, the role of the proxy server being to provide an interface between the wireless network on which the communications devices operate and the (wired) network on which the network server operates. The proxy server may also be used to provide value added services to the mobile communications devices. The proxy servers are implemented as network server devices having hardware and software components which allow the proxy server to provide services to the mobile communications devices. For example, a proxy server can be used to provide bookmarks, cookie caches, implementation of privacy agreements, sub-id translations, location information, presence information, etc. to a mobile communications device. However, in order for the proxy server to provide these services, it is necessary for the proxy server to be able to access communications or requests from the mobile communications device to the network server and specifically, to have knowledge of the content of such requests.
It is desirable to provide end-to-end secure communications between the communications device and the network server, for various reasons. In the case of true end-to-end secure communications between the communications device and the network server, all requests are encrypted and tunneled through the proxy server. Alternatively, a secure connection may be achieved by bypassing the proxy server entirely. In both these scenarios, when a true end-to-end secure connection is established between the mobile communications device and the network server, the proxy server will not have knowledge of the content of requests by the mobile communications device to the network server. Consequently the proxy server will not be able to provide value-added services, such as those mentioned above, to the mobile communications device.